According to the 2011 National Center for Health Statistics report, cardiovascular disease remains the leading cause of death in the United States in men and women of every major ethnic group. It accounted for nearly 616,000 deaths in 2008 and was responsible for 1 in 4 deaths in the U.S. in the same year. Coronary artery disease (CAD) is the most common type of heart disease and in 2008, 405,309 individuals died in the U.S. from this specific etiology. Every year, approximately 785,000 Americans suffer a first heart attack and another 470,000 will suffer an additional myocardial infarction (MI). In 2010, CAD alone was projected to cost the U.S. $108.9 billion including the cost of health care services, medications, and lost productivity. Cardiovascular diseases claims more lives each year than the next four leading causes of death combined—cancer, chronic lower respiratory diseases, accidents, and diabetes mellitus.
Individuals experiencing symptoms including chest pains, palpitations, and fainting spells, individuals with family histories of heart disease, and individuals of advanced age are typically advised to consult a clinician in order to assess overall heart health, and to diagnose heart disease or the potential for heart disease. A clinician typically performs a physical exam on an individual and asks about personal and family medical history before performing any tests. The clinician may also ask about the individual's lifestyle and habits, and may ask other questions that address known or suspected risk factors associated with heart health. The tests needed to diagnose heart disease can vary depending on the condition the clinician suspects the individual to have, and can include but is not limited to blood tests, chest x-rays, electrocardiograms (ECG), and echocardiograms. More advanced tests or diagnostic techniques can include but is not limited to cardiac catheterization, heart biopsy, cardiac computer tomography (CT) scan, and cardiac magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans.
The preliminary and advanced tests can become time consuming, costly and invasive to the individual and results typically need additional time in order for the clinician to review and make a diagnosis based on the results of testing, and together with the data collected from the physical exam and queries, make an assessment of the individual's overall heart health. Communicating the assessment to the individual and communicating changes in the assessment over time can be challenging in that the individual may feel a certain abstraction about an assessment without an understanding of heart health relative to the individual's peer groups, relative to the general population, and/or relative to the individual's own history. Individuals can therefore benefit for improved techniques for communicating heart health with the provider and monitoring heart health over time using a time saving, cost-effective and non-invasive method.